Drug Dealer Sentenced

DIGEST

FORT LAUDERDALE -- A Delray Beach landscaper was sentenced on Monday to a 16-year prison term for his role in a large-scale crack distribution empire that was broken up in 1988.

Abraham Thomas Oliva, 43, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Norman C. Roettger Jr. on a single count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine base. Oliva entered a guilty plea to the charge earlier this year after prosecutors agreed not to seize his elderly mother`s home under federal narcotics forfeiture laws.

Oliva, who faced a maximum sentence of 20 years, was one of 11 indicted in 1988 in connection with a crack distribution network that prosecutors said served a section of Delray Beach around Germantown Road and Southwest Ninth Avenue.

Prosecutors said that in the summer of 1987, the organization was selling crack at a rate of 5,000 ``rocks`` per day at $10 per rock.